


putramartya

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Mahabharata fics [1]
Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Child Death, Domestic Violence, F/M, Imprisonment, Missing Scene, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 08:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16636193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Devaki and Vasudeva, in imprisonment. Oneshot.





	putramartya

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for the canonical deaths of Devaki and Vasudeva’s first six babies. Title means “dying of sons”.

They spend their wedding night huddled together in what should have been their marital bed. All their senses have been spiked by the prophecy, and there are guards posted outside the door, stuttering and murmuring. Devaki and Vasudeva can only cling to each other as chastely as two frightened children.

In the morning, they are moved to a wing further inside the palace, untouched by any outer walls. More secure, more guarded. The rooms are well-furnished, and they will be comfortable, but there are no windows, except the glass roof in their main room through which sunlight filters.

Devaki sinks onto their new bed, and feels rather than sees Vasudeva sit down beside her, and take her hand. How strange this all must be for him, she considers; he has thrown himself before Kamsa’s sword to save her, before they have ever even bedded each other. How many other things will happen outside of order for them?

The bed creaks beneath them -- it is old and worn from disuse -- and Devaki knows what she must do to secure their freedom.

* * *

Kirttimat is born squalling and healthy and pink, and Devaki and Vasudeva smother him in kisses and blessings and prayers. She nurses him, clumsily, although she only gets a few suckles in before Vasudeva draws him away from her and whispers for her to get some sleep.

She wakes to find herself bathed and cleaned, and her son gone.

Vasudeva is slumped in the chair beside the bed.

As though he could not bear to sleep beside her after -- after --

She arises from the bed like a cobra lifting to strike, and with all of the strength in her body one day fresh out of the childbed, she lunges for him. Devaki claws him, bites him, scratches him, and through it all he stiffens not one muscle in protest against her assault. When her punches have stuttered into an irregular staccato rhythm and she has dissolved into sobs, he tucks her into bed like the firstborn son he will never tuck in and strokes her hair until she sleeps.

The grief comes in waves. At their crests, she vents her rage upon him, this man who bartered their eight firstborns for her life, who himself took his hours-old child in his hands, walked up to the Great Hall, and held him out for slaughter, so that she might live.

In the troughs, he coaxes her into eating as much of the rations as they are allotted and massages strength back into her body, even as the ravages of his own grief and her scars are apparent on his frame.

She does not look upon Sushena when he finally arrives, ten days late. She deposits him into Vasudeva’s hands and turns her face away. They have learned their lesson, and he has barely emerged from the womb when he finds himself upon the pyre. He never tastes the sweetness of his mother’s milk, or even has the afterbirth washed from his skin.

When Udayin is born, Devaki deliberately holds him to her breast, and when Vasudeva holds out his hands with resignation and self-loathing mingling in his eyes, Devaki keeps her gaze firmly trained on her third first son. Instinctively, in the way of husband and wife who have spent every hour of their lives together imprisoned side by side, he understands her. He sits in the bed beside her and undoes the fabric of his robe so that he, too, might hold this child directly to his heart.

When the guards report the cries of a third child, and no Vasudeva shows up, and Kamsa has waited long enough, Kamsa himself storms into their gilded cage and snatches Udayin from his mother’s breast. It is the first time Devaki has seen her brother since her wedding day, and she shudders to realize how much more he has grown into their father’s features, but with none of the kindliness of them.

Udayin dies with one blow to the head -- Vasudeva will never breathe a word of it to Devaki, but it took Kamsa several blows to crush Kirttimat and Sushena’s skulls. Mercifully, he has since perfected the craft of killing a baby, and he is in their chambers for less than a minute before he leaves, the stench of blood not even apparent yet.

Neither Devaki nor Vasudeva avert their eyes.

* * *

Time has stoked the embers of Kamsa’s paranoia, and Vasudeva’s mute defiance over Udayin is the bellows that transforms it into an inferno. Enough mercy has been shown, he decides. They are best confined in the dungeons.

It ought not to be much of a change, but Devaki still spent the first seventeen years of her life as Mathura’s petted princess, and even in her first prison, she was glad of having silk blankets and carpets, vases on the shelves and tapestries on the wall, the limited service of attendants, and sunlight filtering through the high-up glass roof.

Now they are just like any other prisoners in a cell three strides by four strides, with a wooden cot, mold on the walls, bars on the door, and no sunlight.

The only mercy is that they are not shackled; Kamsa does not want anything to impede the conception of their next five sons.

* * *

Kamsa sends the court physician to their cell infrequently, enough to ensure that Devaki is strong enough to bear another child for slaughter, and Vasudeva still virile enough to plant his seed within her.

Like breeding horses or dogs, Devaki says once, before they both burst into peals of laughter at what passes for humor, down here in the dankness and the filth.

The king’s sporadic concern is not enough to alleviate the other effects of their imprisonment. Bereft of sunlight, Devaki’s hair thins, and then falls out in matted clamps. Wrinkles groove themselves in their skin, and their joints ache. Normal colds and coughs linger for weeks, the smallest scrapes take months to heal into shiny scars. Decades of only torchlight for illumination leave them squinting and half-unseeing.

Throughout it all, Vasudeva is the one constant by her side. He has never been more than a stride’s step away from her, except when he delivers their sons. She has come to expect him, to depend on him like a child’s need for constancy, and she suspects he does so for her too. If they are ever freed, she does not think she can abide being separated from him.


End file.
